Hunger Games: Dr. Amy H. Sturgis on the Dystopian Tradition

Wonderful opportunity for Hunger Games fans who are students — Dr Amy H. Sturgis, Potter Pundit and All-Around Literary Lioness, is offering a free lecture series this Spring! Read what she sent me about it:

On the weekends of March 28/29 and April 11/12, I’ll be offering a free interactive, multimedia lecture series – hotel accommodations and catering is included – for interested undergraduate and graduate students. It’s in Asheville, NC, a stone’s throw from where the Hunger Games film was shot. Students are responsible for travel there and back, but everything else is paid for.

The subject is “The Dystopian Tradition: What Worlds Gone Wrong Can Teach Us.”

Here’s the description:

Why did nearly 370 international organizations in the spring of 2014 use the term “Big Brother” from Nineteen Eighty-Four in their united call for global surveillance reform? Why did citizens in Thailand in the summer of 2014 adopt the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games to protest the repressive military coup in their country? Dystopian fiction and film pervades popular culture and conveys big ideas about issues of immediate political, economic, and social importance. This series will explore the warnings embedded in a century of great dystopian works with a focus on the lessons about human nature, free societies, and individual and community well-being that remain most relevant–and challenging–today.